


Worth Telling

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussion of Parent death, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4437146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Phil is injured on a mission, Clint finds out they have something in common he didn't know about: they were both fatherless by ten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth Telling

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently learned that in some Marvel canon Phil's father died when he was ten. Ten is also the age that Clint and Barney Barton joined the circus. It intrigued me.

Phil fingers an old keychain shaped in a Chevrolet logo when he’s monitoring an op in a van or car or somewhere he’s got some cover. There’s nothing special about it, just a worn grey flattened cross, the generic company branding that anyone in the world, really, can get their hands on. Clint’s seen them for sale in gas stations, hanging bright and shiny and gold in their newness, but Phil’s is old with the color worn off to its factory platinum shade, flat and used. Clint’s asked about it, but Phil just shrugs and says it’s a story not worth telling.

Now, as Clint presses his hand to Phil’s chest to staunch the flow of blood coming from the knife wound, he feels it resting inside Phil’s lapel pocket. Clint reaches in, pulls the worn metal into his hand, and presses his other hand to Phil’s side. The knife had slipped in a few inches below his ribs, and Phil had gotten two more good hits in to drop the guy who stabbed him before his body caught up to the injury.

He’d dropped like a brick once it did.

“Phil, look at me,” Clint says, keeping his voice steady, falling back on years of giving nothing away when he speaks. Phil’s eyes stay closed; his dark eyelashes rest on paling skin, washed out under the streetlight near the alleyway. Clint can smell the garbage from the restaurant on the other side of the alley, mixed with the smell of blood on his hands.

They’d stumbled on the two HYDRA agents when they were searching the building and the alley behind it, and there were too many civilians around the street in front of the building to draw attention with gunfire. He’d gutted the HYDRA agent he was fighting in one stroke as he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Phil crumple to the rough concrete. The guy’s blood covered Clint’s hand, and now it’s mixing with Phil’s.

Clint pulls his phone out of his tac suit pocket and his voice is gravelly as he coughs out, “Med Evac in less than five or nearest hospital ambulance now.” He gives their location and hangs up.

He leans close to Phil’s ear and growls, “Phil, come on. Look at me.” He rubs the faded keychain in the hand not pressed to Phil’s side, hopes whatever it gives Phil in times of stress might be his tonight in this empty, putrid-smelling alley in Detroit.

Rain starts to fall. It’s slow, but the drops are full and round, and Clint watches Phil’s face as water runs down his cheeks like tears. Phil’s brown hair turns dark with water as Clint begs for him to wake. Finally Phil’s eyes flutter open and he blinks up at Clint, tries to focus.

“Hey,” Clint says, and he tries to sound confident and normal, but the relief at seeing Phil awake grips his chest and pulls his voice to the back of his throat. He swallows.

Phil’s hand finds Clint’s and Clint looks down as Phil pulls the keychain from Clint’s grip and grasps it tight. “My side hurts,” Phil whispers and Clint looks sharply back at him.

Clint keeps his hand pressed hard against the wound, even as the t-shirt he’d shrugged off to use as a makeshift bandage turns pink from the rain mixing with blood. He looks at Phil and sees pinched eyes and clenched teeth. “I know,” he says, and clears his throat. “Help’s on its way. Hang on, okay? Just –“ and he runs out of words.

When Clint is hurt and Phil is holding him together, he always talks, low and even and clear, until they can get help. It’s like Phil can pour assurances like honey from a forever-full glass jar, but Clint is sitting in a cold, wet alley and can’t think of anything to say. “Tell me why you have that keychain,” he says suddenly, like the question leapt to his lips but bypassed his brain. He takes his hand that was holding the metal and brushes Phil’s wet hair out of his face and rests his palm on Phil’s cool cheek.

Phil looks up at him and blinks slowly, like he might pass out again, but his eyes clear and he fixes Clint with a hard stare. It’s like he knows what Clint’s doing, but he’s too weak to demand that the question be retracted.

“Please, Phil,” Clint says. “It’s old as fuck and looks like a piece of tarnished yard-sale silver, and you wouldn’t dream of getting a replacement. Why?” He steals a glance down the alley, wishing for the medics, but it’s still empty.

Phil swallows thickly and sucks in a shaky breath over his teeth. “My dad was a mechanic,” he whispers, and those words alone make Clint bite his lip in quiet shock.

Phil’s dad never gets mentioned.

Clint’s told Phil about his own father, showed him some scars as Phil held him close in the dark safety of their apartment bedroom, but Phil’s father is off-limits. Clint asked him once, but Phil’s face went eerily blank and he’d stalked off to the kitchen to make coffee at one in the morning. Clint hadn’t followed, hadn’t pressed.

Clint wipes rain off of Phil’s forehead and adjusts the t-shirt pressed against the wound. Phil gasps and breathes a few short breaths before looking at Clint again. His normally bright eyes are dark and clouded.

“He ran a shop in Chicago, near the docks, and loved –“ his breath hitches and he clenches his eyes before he adds,” he loved Chevrolets.”

After Phil was quiet a beat too long, Clint taps his cheek. “Come on, Phil. Tell me more about your dad’s shop.”

Phil nods faintly. “I used to hide in the cars he was working on to read or do homework,” he whispers. “Sometimes he’d let me help with the easy stuff.”

Clint can’t help but smile at the image of a tiny, wiry Phil in a thin t-shirt, faded jeans and tennis shoes, curled on the leather seat of an old Chevy, or sliding under a car to change the oil, so he asks, “How old were you when you got the keychain?”

Phil locks eyes with Clint for a moment. “I stole it,” he says as he sucks in a pained breath. “Stole it out of his suit pocket at his funeral. I was ten.”

Clint stares. He didn’t know Phil lost his father when he was just a kid. Didn’t know he’d lost afternoons with his dad, been deprived of the same milestone moments that Clint grew up without. Neither one of them had a dad to teach them how to drive, to take them to baseball games, to help with math homework, to sit with him when he was sick, to ask about dating.

He wondered if Phil was as angry about it in dark moments like this as Clint was.

“I’m sorry, Phil,” Clint whispers, and he hears a noise at the end of the alley. A SHIELD med van is pulling toward them. Clint looks down at the t-shirt, now soaked through with Phil’s blood, at Phil’s face, pale and drawn. Phil fights to keep his eyes open, and Clint feels Phil reach for Clint’s hand.

Phil pushes the keychain into Clint’s palm. “Keep it safe for me, Clint,” he says, his voice filling with desperation. “Please. Don’t lose it.”

“I won’t,” Clint replies with conviction. “I’ll make sure you get it back when you wake up.”

“Just keep it for me,” and now Phil’s voice is airy and thin, and his eyes flutter closed. “Don’t wanna be buried with it,” he mumbles, and then he’s out.

Clint presses his fingers to Phil’s throat to make sure he can still feel a pulse. It’s faint and thready, and as fear claws at his throat, the medics are pulling Clint away so they can get to Phil. Clint grips the keychain tight as he sits down hard on the wet street and watches as they strap Phil to a gurney. Someone drapes a blanket over Clint’s shoulders and pulls him to his feet.

He follows blindly as they bundle him into a car and usher him to the secure medical facility nearby. As he waits in the lobby for news, he fingers the keychain reverently, like he’s been given the keys to a guarded safe. He can’t seem to stop focusing on how Phil’s life changed at ten, a violent upheaval if Phil’s silence until now is any sign, and how Clint’s life changed at ten as well.

That was how old Clint was when he and Barney tried to shake off years of abuse at the hands of their dad and a few evil people in the foster system. They thought they were running to safety, and it was new and different and exciting, but Carson’s was a seismic shift in Clint’s life that steered him down the tumultuous path he stumbled on until he got to SHIELD and Phil, thirteen years later.

He looks down at the old Chevy keychain in his hand and wonders about Phil’s father. He must’ve been good with his hands, must’ve been pretty good with people to have his own shop, good with Phil if he let him try and help around the shop at such a young age. Clint wonders if Phil’s dad read to him at night or hugged him when he was sick – all those things Clint had wished for.

Clint sits on the hard plastic chair in the too-bright waiting room and wonders if Phil screamed when his father died, or if he was calm, controlled at a young age like he is now. Like he is except in those moments when someone gets too close to these memories, and then he cracks, slips, storms away uncharacteristically.

Clint closes his eyes and sighs heavily. He’s tired. He’s afraid of how long the surgery is lasting. He’s afraid he’s taken something from Phil that wasn’t his to take. An hour later, though, and he’s sitting in a different plastic chair next to Phil’s bed, watching him sleep. His color is better and his hair is dry, and his hand is warm in Clint’s hand, as Clint rubs circles with his thumb against Phil’s skin.

Phil’s eyes finally open, and he gives Clint a weak smile as Clint stands and leans over, presses his forehead to Phil’s. “You’re not supposed to get stabbed, dummy,” he whispers, and Phil’s smile loosens and fills his face.

“Yeah, sorry,” he replies, and his voice is raspy, but stronger than it was in the rainy alley.

Clint stands and pulls the keychain out and hands it to Phil. Phil takes it and stares for a moment, closes his eyes, and then opens them and fixes Clint with a cloudy look. “Thanks,” he says, and then looks at the keychain, spinning it slowly. “Did I tell you about it?”

Clint nods. “Yeah, a little bit. It was your dad’s.”

Phil keeps staring at the tarnished silver. “I should tell you more about it sometime.”

“Only if you want to.” Clint means it, too. Losing a father you love when you’re on the brink of when you need him most, well, Clint’ wouldn’t ask Phil to relive that. The hole in Clint’s life where good fathers and good mothers were supposed to be had been empty since Clint’ could remember – his loss was different than Phil’s, possibly easier.

Phil is quiet for a moment, and then says, “I should tell you about him.” Phil looks up and finds Clint’s hand at the edge of the bed with his free hand. He grips it a little too hard, but Clint doesn’t flinch. “It’s worth telling you.”

Clint leans down to press a kiss to Phil’s forehead. “Rest. You can tell me when I get you out of here and home, over a pot of my chili and some cornbread.”

Phil closes his eyes and nods. “He made a mean chili, too,” he says airily. “Yours ‘s better, though,” he adds, and then he falls asleep in the next breath.

Clint watches, takes the keychain when it slips out of Phil’s hand, and puts it in his pocket, where it’s safe.

 

 


End file.
